Early in his presidency, Reagan proposed a comprehensive space-based defense program, designated the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, which would provide a missile defense shield against Sovietnuclear weaponry. Gary Seven was somewhat skeptical of this program, noting that he took no pleasure in seeing human conflicts being carried out in space.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Reagan publicly supported the man's policies of reform for the communist nation. The two world leaders eventually formed a successful diplomatic relationship, which would eventually lead to the end of hostilities between the two nations. Nonetheless, Reagan staunchly refused to agree to Gorbechev's request for the United States to abandon the SDI project, a request which the General Secretary made in one of their earliest diplomatic conferences, which was held in Reykjavik, Iceland in December1986. During this conference, Roberta Lincoln prevented an attempt on Reagan's life when she discovered that a cup of jelly beans brought to the President was poisoned. (TOS - The Eugenics Warsnovel: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 1)